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Saturday, February 21, 2015

The Goal of Accountability in Teacher Prep is Not Satisfied by Unscientific Political Schemes

What professionals responsible for the preparation of teachers should adamantly oppose are unscientific, and politically-motivated, efforts to shift blame for unsatisfactory student achievement results away from underfunded P-12 programs through the creation of unsound accountability schemes.

Holding teacher prep institutions responsible for the performance of students they never had, in schools over which they exercise no control, is never OK. Let's keep arguing for a fair and scientifically defensible accountability formula.

Teacher prep programs need to be accountable, too

As if on cue, teacher preparation organizations, college and university education schools, and teachers unions are protesting proposed federal regulations for assessing the quality and impact of teacher preparation programs.

Robert C. Pianta

Over
the past month, my e-mail inbox has been filled with a stream of
increasingly dire pleas to join the chorus. Delayed for more than a year
by a firestorm of protest, the latest round of proposed regulations is
subject to the same criticisms as the previous one. The primary
complaints: The regulations are burdensome and would be expensive to
implement; they devalue the work of graduates who teach in non-tested
grades and subjects such as special education, music or art; and they
rely on state test scores that lack validity as measures of a teacher’s
impact. The newest critiques also go further, claiming that the
regulations would cause teacher education programs to push graduates
away from teaching in more challenging schools.

I
am embarrassed that professionals responsible for the preparation of
teachers seem to oppose so adamantly efforts to evaluate the competence
of the workforce they produce. As a scholar who works in areas related
to the assessment and improvement of teaching, as an educator and as a
dean of a school of education with a teacher preparation program, I
worry that, rather than recognizing an opportunity for real leadership,
my profession has reached a new low in the teacher wars. The response to
the proposed regulations is a failure to recognize our responsibility
to the public and to our own goals and values.

Don’t
those of us who work in teacher preparation believe and hope that
graduates of our programs are effective? Do we not intend for our
graduates to be capable of teaching well, even in tough circumstances or
to students whose backgrounds and experiences vary? I would bet that
every admissions brochure to every teacher preparation program in the
country includes those aims and aspirations. What happened to our
commitment and responsibility to back up those claims? Why aren’t we
leading this charge?

When
the idea of holding teacher preparation programs accountable was
floated by the Obama administration more than a year ago, I agreed in
concept but opposed the approach being considered because it was so
rigid. That proposal relied too heavily on value-added models of student
learning (which attempt to isolate the effect individual teachers have
on their students’ test results), failed to note that nearly half of
teachers teach in non-tested subjects or grades, and did not apply the
same criteria to alternative preparation programs such as Teach for
America. This first foray attracted a lot of fire and was tabled, but it
was a signal to teacher preparation programs of what was to come. Would
we take responsibility for our performance or stand by and wait for
some other entity to force us, then play the victim? My inbox
illustrates how we responded. Here we are more than a year later and the
rhetoric is at full throttle. And having read those e-mails, I wonder
if opponents have even read the Education Department’s proposals.

The proposed regulations
would require each state to develop measurements — and systems for
collecting and reporting them — to assess the performance of new and
early career teachers, but these metrics would not have consequences for
institutions receiving federal support until 2020. States would be
required to convene stakeholders and define how to gauge teachers’
influence on student learning, which might lead to assessments such as
surveys, observations, achievement tests and, yes, even value-added
scores from state tests. What’s so unreasonable about this?

Opponents
of the regulations have effectively co-opted the public’s broad
dissatisfaction with over-testing, aiming their critiques squarely at
the inadequacies of these tests. That may be a fair concern, but the
proposed regulations clearly state that value-added assessment is only
one option among many. On the other side of the issue, some worry that
the regulations are so flexible that they are unlikely to lead to
improvements in teacher preparation, because states will design systems
with no real validity in discriminating between effective and
ineffective early career teachers.

We can
argue all day long about measures, formulas and funds. But as
professionals preparing teachers, we cannot in good conscience claim
that our programs make a difference if we are not willing to tackle
these thorny challenges head on. What might such efforts look like? We
could convene coalitions of teacher preparation programs to engage state
education officials on how to make data accessible. We could use the
flexibility afforded by these new regulations to identify and develop
assessments that work for our program goals. We could work together to
pilot new and better assessments, or partner with districts that hire
our graduates, to improve procedures and operations.

Regardless
of which path we choose, we must take responsibility for both our
mission and its outcomes — and work to solve our problems rather than
complain about them.

Robert C. Pianta is the dean of the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia.

4 comments:

Anonymous
said...

In a global sense, I continue to be distressed and confused by a federal government that tries to reduce funding to states based upon effectiveness, regardless of the measurement instrument. Having worked briefly in the federal sector, I can attest to that systems dated lack of efficiency and effectiveness. Now we have federal politicians wanting to tighten purse strings on states when it can't even keep its own house functioning within its budget, much less in an accountabable efficient fashion.

As a simple educator, all I get out of reading this Dean's response is just reaffirmation of how policy, practice and pragmatics are completely non aligned. Strangely ironic but the guy actually reinforces the impression that higher ed is out of touch with K-12. Once his teacher candidates leave his college he has no more control over their behaviors and practices than a parent has over an adult child who leaves home. Teachers do what district leadership directs them to do, not what a college instructor told them based upon their dated experiences or detached perceptions. I wonder how Dean's would feel about being rated and paid based upon conditions for which they had no direct influence?

I think that it is easy to talk big when you are UVA but a different story when you are a smaller state school attracting kids who often have lower ACT/SAT and lower SES background. Similarly, if you are a small private school, it is only going to take a few of your students taking jobs at low performing schools to make you look like your ed department isn't doing a good job of prepping pre-service teachers.

Last thing we need is post secondary education departments trying to align themselves with the flavor of the moment K-12 assessment in order to try to prep their pre-service teachers on how to punk the assessment system. Heck by the time they graduate and get a job, KDE or state legislature will change the system again.

I think that what bugs me about this conversation is the assumption that we have a bunch of bad teachers in schools based on these everchaning assessment instruments. Further that these teachers are bad because colleges of education aren't preparing them well. As critics point out, it not a simple one dimentional linear equation. There are multiple variables which this dean appears to want to discount but strangely should be elements of which are emphasized when preparing pre=service teachers. A lecture on Piaget, lesson plan format review, a confidentiality workshop and ... oh yeah some courses in the content they are supposed to be imparting, does not a teacher make.

To be honest, I am not even sure anymore what folks expect from education. Seems like we have provided a lot of lip service about an ideal which just isn't turning out to be a practical reality because it discounts personal choice, intellectual ability, work ethic and even embracing the idealistic values of education. If I am a seasoned educator and feel that way, how can I sell it to new teachers much less my students?

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On the campaign trail...with my wife Rita

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Faculty Senate Chair

Serving as Mace Bearer during the Inauguration of Michael T. Benson as EKU's 12th president.

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EDF 203 in EKU's one-room schoolhouse.

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Lecturing on the history of Berea College to Berea faculty and staff, 2014.

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